1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to a support system for the manufacture of dental restorations.
2. Discussion of the Background Art
For the manufacture of dental restorations, it is first required that the dentist will determine tooth data of the tooth that is to be restored. These tooth data include also the tooth color. The tooth color is typically communicated by indication of a color pattern from a dental color system (e.g. VITA classical A1-D4 or VITA System 3D-Master); in the ideal case, this indication is supplemented by brightness, chroma and shade of color as color coordinates, thus allowing for a more precise description of the tooth color. Determination of the tooth color and of the color coordinates can be performed with the aid of suitable measurement devices. A useful device for this purpose is the measurement device VITA Easyshade® of VITA Zahnfabrik company. In a next step, it is required to generate a photographic image of the corresponding tooth of the patient. Presently, such a tooth image is generated by means of a digital camera. Then, the generated tooth image as well as the tooth data determined by the measurement device have to be transmitted to a computer. With the aid of special software installed on the computer, the tooth data will then be allocated to the tooth image. Such an allocation process can be performed e.g. by use of the software VITA Assist and VITA ShadeAssist. This allocating has to be carried out by the dentist. In the allocation process, errors may occur e.g. due to selection of a wrong tooth image. Next, the tooth image with the allocated tooth data will be transmitted to a dental laboratory, particularly via Internet. The dental technician will then have to call up the data received from the data processing device of the dental laboratory, optionally further process these data and then, for performing the dental restoration, print them out. This has the disadvantage that the acceptance of this system on the dental technician's side is often low.
It is an object of the disclosure to provide a support system for the manufacture of dental restorations which allows for improved handling and preferably also will find better acceptance.